The Coffee Date Dress

The last week has been pretty unusual in our house...  Jeff started a new job (A/V director!), so he's been at work a lot.  I was getting pretty bored at home by myself.  Then last Monday, I had a thought - my birthday was coming up on Friday, and I wanted to go out for a nice dinner, but what would I wear?  I found myself on Pinterest, and next thing I knew, I had found a somewhat easy-looking dress pattern.  So off I went, found some fabric in my craft box, printed out the pattern, and decided that I would make this dress and be wearing on my birthday.

24 pages of pattern to sort through...

The pattern taped together

After I printed out the pattern, I saw that I would have to cut the borders off every sheet, match the edges, tape it all together, and then cut out the pieces.  I also read the directions all the way through at this point, and realized that I'd have to do an invisible zipper and this thing called all-in-one facing.  I may have panicked a bit at that point... I do not like zippers.  I've had bad experiences with them.  Well, with sewing projects in general.  I was always too hasty and ended up messing stuff up and had to unpick it and redo it and then I'd get frustrated and give up on it.  But I was determined not to let that happen this time.

The pattern pieces

So I got all the pieces cut out, the fabric marked and cut, and was ready to start sewing.  The bodice and ruffle came first, which wasn't too bad.  Attaching the ruffle to the bodice was kind of frustrating though.

ruffle: completed.

Then came the first true test of my patience: the all-in-one facing.  Now, according to blogs, and google, and my mother (a seamstress extraordinaire), this was a pretty awesome way to get neat and finished edges for the armholes and neckline - especially when the dress doesn't have a lining.  I spent a good hour looking up tutorials and pictures and videos of the process, but it was still pretty nerve-wracking.  My younger sister showed up soon after I finished sewing the facing, at which point I was jumping around the room, so excited that it actually worked. Then came the skirt, which I attached to the bodice.

attaching the facing

facing is done and skirt attached

Next: the bane of my existence.  I was sweating bullets by the time I started working on the invisible zipper.  I was so scared of ruining the dress at this point.  So I went SUPER slowly.  And by some miracle, it worked.  I had a zipper, and the sides were lined up and it was even - what?!  So excited.  I quickly finished off the top edges and attached the hook and eye.

the finished zipper!

After that, I sewed a blind hem (by hand), tacked down the ruffles so they wouldn't stick up in weird ways, and made a couple adjustments to the side darts to make the dress fit better.  Mission accomplished!!!!  Friday came, the dress was completed, and I wore it out for dinner.  I'm still beyond excited that this project worked out so well... I think I could get used to this.

the finished product!

Thanks to Elaine May for the pattern, which can be found here: http://selfishseamstress.wordpress.com/downloads/

The North Island, pt. I

The Journey

As excited as I was about this trip to New Zealand, I was a little nervous about how long this journey would take.  I've managed to get through 12.5 hour flights when I was flying to and from Jordan, but every time - without fail - I would be jumping out of my skin by 11 hours.  So with a 14+ hour flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, I wasn't sure I'd make it through in one piece...

4 am, May 8th.  We got up, loaded up our bags and drove out to the airport (thank you, Bill!) to catch our 6am flight to JFK.  Then came a 10 hour layover.  It was bearable though, because MasterCard was doing this promotional thing in our terminal, and you could get free internet and a comfy chair if you had one of their cards.  Score!  And to top it off, the space shuttle was temporarily parked on top of an airplane there, so we got to see it up close as we taxied on the runway.  It was awesome.

So then we got on our flight to LA, which wasn't bad, and hung out for another hour.  By the time we boarded our flight to Sydney, we had been up for almost 24 hours and we were running on hardly any sleep.   It was rough.  So rough in fact, that I couldn't even stay awake for dinner.  I fell asleep multiple times while eating, and they finally took it away while I slept.  The flight itself wasn't actually that bad.  It was long, but honestly not as rough as some of my flights to the Middle East.  So we touched down in Sydney, having crossed the international date line, on May 10th.  We got on our last plane to Auckland, picked up the rental car, and headed off to find our first hotel.

Auckland

The first challenge: driving.  They drive on the other side of the road here, which was really confusing.  Jeff was doing all the driving, and I would be doing all the navigating.  Simple, right?  Nope.  No gps, no data plans, and only minimal maps meant we were stopping at McDonald's to load map directions (or take pictures of them) in order to get from place to place, and hoping we didn't get lost.  Our first night we stayed at this little place called Oakwood Manor.

 I got us lost going there from the airport - I was too busy oohing and ahhing at all the scenery and didn't pay attention to the distances on the map - but we found it pretty easily on the way back.  We found a local grocery store, and tried New Zealand's famous L&P (it's a lemony fizzy drink made locally), and of course, had Subway for dinner.  Instead of American cheese, they had "Old English" cheese - it didn't quite taste the same.  Early the next morning, we grabbed breakfast at McDonald's - we stopped here frequently for internet to load driving directions - and then headed off on our 4 day tour of the North Island (and a bunch of LOTR filming locations).

To Rotorua

First we would be heading to Port Waikato to see Weathertop.   It was actually on private land, so we couldn’t get to the exact location.  But we were trying to get as close as possible, and ended up parked in some guy's farm, quickly turning around to backtrack as the owner's looked dubiously at us.  We stopped at the closest point in the road, got out and took a few pictures, but we were a bit disappointed that we couldn't really find it.  Fortunately, we were headed for Matamata next, home of Hobbiton.  We stopped along the way at this small café called the Black Beagle Café, and had coffee, steak pies, and a fresh out of the oven blueberry muffin - yum! 

Back on the road, we came to the end of our directions to Hobbiton, but there was no Hobbiton, just fields.  So we kept driving until we saw this little house by the side of the road, pulled in the driveway, and I ran to the door to ask for directions.  The couple looked pretty surprised, but said we weren't far and explained how to get there.  We finally arrived about 10 minutes before the tour left. 

Hobbiton was probably one of the coolest things about the trip.  It looked exactly like it did in the movies!  We were lucky - for years after LOTR was filmed, it was just a bunch of holes in the ground.  But because the Hobbit would also be filmed there, they rebuilt the place and decided to leave it intact this time.  We saw Sam's house, the ol' Gaffer's house, Bag End, the Green Dragon (from across the lake, they're doing some work on it to make it safe for customers to come through), the Party Tree, and even got to go in one of the hobbit holes.  It was so much fun!

After Hobbiton, we set off for Rotorua, where we would be couch-surfing for the first time.  We stayed with this really sweet girl, Klee, who is a high school teacher.  She had actually spent some time in the States before, so it was fun talking with her about her experiences there.   That night, we went out for dinner at an Indian restaurant (Jeff said he hadn't really had Indian before), and it was delicious!  We went to bed early, still jet-lagged, and the next morning, got a massive breakfast at the Fat Dog and headed off to find the natural hot springs.  Klee was kind enough to tell us how to get to a local place that was free and had a hot and cold river running into each other, so you could move up or down the pools to find a comfortable temperature.  They were awesome!  It was a cool, sunny morning, so you could see the steam rising off of the water, and even though it smelled a bit sulfur-y, it was wonderfully relaxing. We were surrounded by trees, only a couple people around (who mostly kept to themselves), and quiet - only the birds and the whispering of the wind through the trees to keep us company.

Coming up: off to Taupo, Turangi, and Wellington!